


Blind Luck

by Argyle



Category: Good Omens
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-13
Updated: 2006-01-13
Packaged: 2019-02-11 20:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: Luck never gives; it only lends.





	Blind Luck

It was half-past five when Aziraphale heard the bell on his door jingle.

He frowned, certain he had locked it some time between two days and a fortnight ago, and pulled his spectacles from the bridge of his nose. “Hullo?” he said, rising from his chair. And then: “Oh, my dear boy, it’s only--”

“Shh,” came Crowley’s reply.

“Whatever is the matter? You look as though you’ve seen... Well. Something.”

Crowley shook his head, held a finger to his lips, and proceeded to draw the blinds across the shop windows with the steady accuracy of one who has had rather a lot of practice at concealment. “There,” he said with a heavy sigh. “That ought to throw them off for a while.”

“Throw them off?” Aziraphale asked. He raised a hand to part the blinds; the street appeared as it always did, give or take a few early-rising revelers. “Who?”

“ _Them_.” Crowley peered out the window, tapping it lightly with his fingertip.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and smiled as he saw the cat which lay supine and satisfied upon the pavement. It was black as night and quite as melancholy, and its tail curled round the kerb. “I daresay I have never seen a handsomer beast.”

“There’re three of them.”

“And so there are.”

“They’re not just any sort of cat, you realize,” Crowley continued, allowing the blinds to snap shut. He stared at Aziraphale over the frames of his sunglasses; his cheeks were slightly flushed. His lips curled into a grim smile. “You _do_ realize, don’t you?”

“Why,” Aziraphale said with an easy nod, “I believe they belong to a certain Mr. Lovegood who keeps an, er, _specialty_ shop down the way.”

“They’re _black_ cats, Aziraphale. They’re already halfway in.”

Aziraphale folded his hands before him. “Quite.”

“And if I didn’t know better,” Crowley said, clenching his hands into fists as he made his way to the backroom, “I would say they were making a point to cross my path.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale managed. “But surely you don’t... That is to say, any prejudice over black cats is the outdated product of stuff and nonsense. I’ve not the foggiest notion as to why--,” he cleared his throat, “--Why don’t I put the kettle on, hmm?”

“All right,” Crowley said, and eased himself onto a chair. “You didn’t think it nonsense when you had a midnight caller last week with a hook for a hand.”

Aziraphale blanched. “But that was hardly mere super--”

“Superstition?” Crowley looked up. “Is that what you think this is?”

“No. Yes. Certainly not,” Aziraphale said, maneuvering the boiling water towards the pot with one hand and a teaspoon with the other. Crowley was still looking at him, though his eyes had narrowed somewhat. “It isn’t only that. Of course it isn’t _only_ that. I know as well as anyone that there are always grains of truth hidden in the roughest of human rigmaroles.”

Crowley’s shrug turned into a flinch as the hot tea seared a path across his tongue. “Those cats were _following_ me,” he said. “There isn’t any doubt.”

“Well, perhaps they took a fancy to you.”

“It wasn’t just that, though.”

“It wasn’t?” Aziraphale asked, and set down a plate of kippers and toast.

“No,” Crowley said between sips. “When I woke up this morning--,” he made an idle gesture, “-- _afternoon_ , I found a spider web in my best potted yew. Did it just to spite me, the cheeky bugger. But before I could have a rational talk with it, you know, I saw that both of my shoes were left-footed. My favorite shoes.”

Aziraphale covered his mouth so his smile would not show.

“When I leaned against the wall to miracle the right one back, that sixteenth-century mirror you always hated so much came crashing down. Glass everywhere, the whole lot.” He bit into his toast, pointedly avoiding the kippers. “By the time I cleaned up the mess, shouldered the yew, and went down to the stoop, it was raining. And then my umbrella turned itself out.”

“Uncanny,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Come again?”

“What happened to the plant?”

Crowley snorted. “What do _you_ think? Anyway, I had a bit of business to attend to, but when I got to the building and into the lift, the bloody thing stopped.”

“Stopped?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said glumly.

Aziraphale glanced up from his plate. “On which floor?”

“The twelfth.”

“Oh. Funny if it had been the thirteenth, don’t you think?”

“No,” Crowley said.

“No,” Aziraphale repeated, and vanquished the notion that Crowley seemed to be more at ease now he had talked about what was bothering him. He stirred his tea vigorously. “I suppose not.”

“When I finally made it back out, a piano fell from a fifth story window. A piano, not a dozen meters in front of me.”

“A grand piano?”

Crowley shot him a sidelong glance. “A bowl of petunias fell from the sixth story.”

“I daresay it must have been a close call.”

“A sperm whale fell from--”

“Might I trouble you for the salt?”

“Hmm?” Crowley dashed crumbs from the corner of his mouth with the folded tip of a napkin. “Oh,” he said, and then reached forward for the dove-shaped shaker which stood ever-so-slightly closer to the angel than himself.

Aziraphale knew intuitively that it would tip, but he did not know precisely how much salt would spill across the dinted wooden tabletop.

It was, in fact, quite a lot.

“Goes over your left shoulder,” he said.

“One spilled saltshaker, one bowl of petunias.” As though mapping the perimeter, Crowley paused for a moment before he continued, “One broken mirror, two left shoes, three black cats, four hours in a windowless office--”

“--ten lords a-leaping?”

“Shut up, angel.”

Aziraphale smiled. “I say,” he said. “Does your nose itch?”

“It might.”

It did.


End file.
